The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

Furuli’s First Book 411
a point of time. The observation that van der Waerden quotes from VAT 4956
to show what was required for such calculations is exactly a lunar position
related to a normal star, not just to a zodiacal sign:
“At the beginning of the night of the 5 th the moon overtook by 1
cubit eastwards the northern star at the foot of the Lion [= Beta Virginis].” (B.
L. van der Waerden, Science Awakening II, 1974, p. 185)
Furuli, then, has totally misunderstood van der Waerden’s discussion,
because (1) he is speaking about the crudeness of (astrological) calculations, not
about observations, and (2) the kind of observations needed for such calculations
(which he shows by reference to VAT 4956) is detailed because the lunar
position is given in relation to a star, with both distance and direction specified. Although
van der Waerden’s example happens to contain a scribal error (see below under
I-B-4), the information given is definitely not crude. It is specific and precise.
The writing of the original tablet on the basis of observational notes
A further source of error, according to Furuli, is “the process of writing
down the data.” His discussion of this focuses on the astronomical tablet VAT
4956, the “diary” dated to the 37th year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. Furuli
explains:
“The tablet itself is a copy made a long time after the original was
made, but even the original was not made at the time the observations
were made. The tablet covers a whole year, and because clay hardly can
be kept moist for 12 months, the observations must have been written
down on quite a lot of smaller tablets, which were copied when the
original was made.” (pp. 30, 31)
Furuli describes the procedure correctly, and it is well known to
Assyriologists. But Furuli adds in parentheses, “(provided that the data were
not later calculated and there never was an ‘original tablet’.)” This theory—that
Babylonian scholars at a later time calculated the information recorded on the
astronomical diary VAT 4956 and dated it to the 37th year of
Nebuchadnezzar—is false because many of the phenomena reported on the
tablet were impossible to retrocalculate.
Because Furuli repeats and elaborates this theory in Chapter 2, I will refute
his claims in connection with my comments on that chapter. It is sufficient to
point out that scholars agree that VAT 4956 is a faithful copy of the original,
which is proven by modern computations of the positions recorded on the
tablet. The copying errors are few and trivial, as pointed out in GTR 4 , ch. 4, A-
1. (See further below under I-B-4.)
I am aware of only one scholar who has tried to overcome the evidence
provided by VAT 4956, namely, E. W. Faulstich, founder and director of the
Chronology-History Research Institute in Spencer, Iowa, USA. Faulstich
believes it is possible to establish an absolute Bible chronology without the aid
of extra-Biblical sources, based solely on the cyclical phenomena of the Mosaic
law (sabbath days, sabbath and jubilee years) and the cycle of the 24 sections of
the levitical priesthood. One consequence of his theory is that the whole Neo-
Babylonian period has to be moved backward one year. Because this conflicts